My challenge as an entrepreneur (13) – Fola Daniel Adelesi

The challenges of the first conference were not enough to stop me from achieving what I wanted to achieve. That was not enough to stop me from going on. One of the interesting things I have seen in life is that some people look at you and may call for you a failure for the same endeavour they have never tried only to realize that they would have been worse off if they tried it. Despite the fact they have not even tried it I still make bold to say that they are worse off because they are still standing at a spot waiting for the perfect time to do something and waiting for enough resources to get things done. They never get those resources and never get anything done so in all humility brought by the shame of stagnation, they acknowledge that they are still lagging behind for not attempting any thing.
I have made it a personal resolution that I am not going to listen to people who have not attempted anything yet they look like the best of critiques you may find around. Someone once said to me that there no monuments erected to remember critiques. Look around you and you will see that every monument is in honour of those who have contributed something to the society and not those who just wake up and perfect everything with their mouths. I kept writing more poems and I kept writing more articles for people to read. I had a dream to publish magazines but I did something very simple when I did not have the money to publish that magazine. I collected people’s emails wherever I went to speak and also collected their phones numbers. I, sincerely at that time, did not need their phone numbers. All I wanted was to be able to send them some of my articles. What I did was simple. I would prepare and article to be mailed and the mails were always sent as blind carbon copies (BCC). With this feature all the people who were receiving the mails did not know who else was receiving the mail or how many of them were receiving the mail. I could not start with my magazine but I had the computer right in front of me so I did not wait!
At some other times what I did was even simpler than sending mails on the internet. I simply took a sheet of paper and picture somebody on my mind. As I picture that person I begin to write words of encouragement to that person. Often times when they got my papers they would say a very big thank you and that I did not know what the short notes meant to them. I remember doing this over and over again to people who were around me. Again, I did not wait for a magazine before I started writing words of encouragement. Later I began using text messages to do the job when it looked like I had a very busy schedule and didn’t have the time to write short notes to several people. I also took advantage of the fact that I could send the messages to several people. All of these things I did were not in anyway the real pictures on my mind. The pictures on my mind were so big but humility and genuine passion have taught me that no matter how big a dream is, there is always a small way to start except you are not ready to do anything. Your dreams can’t get so big that there are no humble ways to begin. On several occasions I would type a one page article, make several photocopies and distribute. While others were seeing a one page article I was seeing a global magazine. The most important thing was that I wrote every article as if the global magazine was ready for publication. I didn’t underrate the reach of my articles. Today they are all over the world. …to be continued